Extremely severe and extended winter in Europe has led to some solace for the steel mills in Ukraine. Hitherto dithering steel prices has gathered buoyancy in frigid Black Sea ports. It is learnt that both long and flat steel offers has resurrected last week.

It is reported that the CIS steel export market is picking up amid low availability of the products and problems with logistics. The reason of such price increase has to be found in the highly critical situation of the ports which are all of them basically blocked by snow and ice.

Bad weather conditions produced some problems in transportation
1. The Kerch channel was closed for some days, the Azov see is frozen, storm alerts were in the Black Sea
2. Transport routes were diverted to less problematic ports with increase of transportation costs
3. Lowed down cargos processing impacted delivery time …

However with the winter receding it will not be easy push the incremental volumes in a circumspect market especially on Iranian angle.

FOB Black Sea

Change is on Feb 17th as compared to 10th Feb 2012

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